Hey Admin, What is Analytics and Do I need it for my website?

This is a great question sent in by James in Ohio about Analytics and Web-Stats. Hold on and let me get my lecturing stick and start preaching…

But before I get into it – My answer is YES you NEED analytics for ANY website you launch.

To start this discussion I should first define what Analytics is. According to Wikipedia Analytics is “the science of analysis”.

Analytics is vital to any business participating in web activities. Being able to analyze how much traffic you are getting, where is it coming from and where are they are going helps evolve your business. Without analytics I would not be able to gage which ads are doing better then others and replace the slow performers with PROVEN successful ads. Analytics is just that analyzed statistics.

 By using Google Analytics, a free service, I have found where the majority of my traffic comes from. This allows me to “cater to the majority”. It lets me find trends such as what people are searching for and finding my site and what are the new hot topics I should be writing about to draw more traffic. Once you draw more traffic you can use your statistics on improving page views per visit. Looking at my numbers at any given time I can make adjustments or additions to my site watching for trends and hoping to push these numbers up. My tactics do not always work and the numbers don’t lie. So if something has affected my site negatively I can undo my changes and see if my numbers improve.

Analytics allows for me to compare how different versions of my website are doing against each other. I can then compare small or large changes and see if it affects traffic in any way. How about seeing what version of your site works better for different geographical regions? These are just some of the reasons I love and live by Analytics.  I really could not see doing ANY of this without my statistics. It would be like trying to drive while blindfolded. Sure you might get where you are going but is it the best way to do things? Probably not and it is almost certain to get you into a car crash!

So to be a “Safe Driver” in the internet world you should watch your stats, trends and referrals so you can anticipate and make educated decisions. 

Google Analytics does have one drawback and that is how often it is updated. Google does not allow us to see real time stats so if you want to watch those hits coming in you need another service. For this I have a second analytics account with http://www.statcounter.com this allows me to stalk my traffic and see in real time where people are going and what they are doing on my website as a direct result of some changes.

That’s my Analytics Rant – anyone else care to weigh in?

_ThePreachingAdmiN_